Labor and Employment Law Commons^™

Free Speech, Assembly, And Labor Rights In Singapore And The United States, Tyler Smith

University of Miami International and Comparative Law Review

No abstract provided.

Withholding Tax On Wages: Central Illinois Public Service Co. V. United States, Maine Law Review

Maine Law Review

Section 3402 of the Internal Revenue Code of 1954 requires every employer to deduct and withhold a tax upon wages paid to its employees. The term "wages" is defined in section 3401(a) as all remuneration for services performed by an employee for his employer. Despite apparent simplicity, the process of defining "wages" has generated conflicting interpretations. In Central Illinois Public Service Co. v. United States, the Seventh Circuit confronted the issue of whether meal reimbursements constitute wages for withholding purposes. The meaning of "wages" in section 3401(a) depends upon an assessment of the policy objectives underlying income tax withholding. In …

Tortious Withholding Of Insurance Benefits: Gibson V. National Ben Franklin Ins. Co., Maine Law Review

Maine Law Review

The Maine Workers' Compensation Act provides that an employer's compensation carrier shares the employer's immunity from common law suit. If the carrier delays or withholds benefits owed an injured employee under an approved compensation agreement, the Act imposes a fine on the carrier and permits the employee to recover the overdue compensation payments by invoking the equity powers of the Superior Court. The Act makes no provision for redress when the carrier refuses to pay, a potential limitation recently confronted by the Maine Supreme Judicial Court in Gibson v. National Ben Franklin Insurance Company. In reversing the trial court's dismissal …

Workmen's Compensation: Compensable Injuries; Awards; Relation Of Court And Commission, Maine Law Review

Maine Law Review

During Justice Dufresne's term as Chief Justice of the Maine Supreme Judicial Court, the court considered over sixty-five cases presenting issues that involved the state Workmen's Compensation Act. These decisions attempted to define both the concept of a compensable injury and the nature of workmen's compensation awards. Examination of the court's treatment of these two major components of the workmen's compensation system reveals the Law Court's attitude toward the system itself, the statutory scheme utilized by the Maine Legislature, and the administrative procedure employed in handling workmen's compensation claims. Consideration of the relationship between the court and the Industrial Accident …

Labor Law: Teacher Disputes, Maine Law Review

Maine Law Review

The vast majority of labor law issues presented to the Maine Supreme Judicial Court during the previous seven years were rooted in the confusion surrounding the role of collective bargaining in public school teacher disputes. Indicative of the unsettled nature of this area is the tension between the teacher termination statutes and the Municipal Public Employee Labor Relations Law (hereinafter referred to as MPELRL). Despite the later enactment of MPELRL and its more specific provisions, the court has consistently refused to give it wide application in teacher disputes, choosing instead to rely on the more amorphous statutory provisions defining the …

Eligibility For Vocational Rehabilitation Under The Maine Workers' Compensation Act: Troubling New Standards, Robert T. Duddy

Maine Law Review

In 1961, section 52 of the Maine Workers' Compensation Act was amended to include a new provision which states that a worker who suffers an industrial injury is entitled to vocational rehabilitation. Under section 52, vocational rehabilitation may be awarded if such services are "necessary and desirable" to restore the injured worker to gainful employment and "reasonable and proper" in scope. The language of section 52 pertaining to vocational rehabilitation has remained essentially unchanged since 1961, despite major developments in the functional, economic, and administrative theories underlying vocational rehabilitation. Narrowly construing section 52, the court in Lancaster v. Cooper Industries …

The Prima Facie Case Approach To Employment Discrimination, Joanne F. Cole

Maine Law Review

Employment discrimination litigation has increased dramatically during the past decade. Under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964—Congress' sweeping prohibition of discrimination in employment decisions on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin –older federal civil rights statutes and state counterparts to Title VII, courts have developed discrete, cognizable theories of discrimination. An analytical framework has also developed by which to evaluate the facts, innuendoes, and statistics that constitute the claims and defenses in a discrimination case. Within the generally accepted approach to the evidence, however, there is no consensus about the weight each element …

Perspectives On Older Workers: Maine's Prohibition Of Mandatory Retirement, Susan Dana Kertzer

Maine Law Review

The 1978 Amendments to the federal Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA), which generally prohibit mandatory retirement before the age of seventy, have been criticized as proposing to "extend freedom of choice by restricting freedom of contract. Despite such criticisms and other less philosophical objections to the Act, the 108th Maine Legislature in 1977 passed the first part of a legislative program which, as of January 1, 1980, prohibits all mandatory retirement in Maine, in both the public and private sectors. Emphasizing the parallels between age discrimination legislation and other civil rights legislation, one of the bill's senate supporters acknowledged …

Union Liability For Wildcat Strikes: A Look At Carbon Fuel, Jane Rigler

Maine Law Review

For several years the federal district courts and circuit courts of appeal wrestled with the question of a labor union's liabilities and obligations when its members engaged in a wildcat strike. Concern for halting wildcat strikes increased considerably after the Supreme Court's decision in Buffalo Forge Co. v. United Steelworkers. In Buffalo Forge the Court held that a union-sanctioned strike over an issue not subject to binding arbitration could not be enjoined pending an arbitrator's determination of whether the strike violated the no-strike provision of the collective agreement. The Court refused to expand its 1970 Boys Markets, Inc. v. Retail …

Stars, Stripes, And Pills: The Stock Narratives That Blind, Michelle Wilde Anderson

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.

Algorithmic Bias In Hiring: Amending Title Vii To Prohibit Ai Discrimination, Michael H. Leroy

Journal of Legislation

I propose amendments to Title VII to address discriminatory hiring related to AI technologies. Section 703(c)’s definition of an “employment agency” should be modified to include “any person who uses artificial intelligence” to procure employees. I also propose a new definition in section 703 that incorporates the expansive definition of AI in 15 U.S.C. 9401(3). These small changes would make AI hiring firms more responsible for discriminatory screening and selection of job applicants, and better protect applicants who are adversely selected by sex, race, disability and other protected characteristics.

Cannabis At Work: Navigating The Intersection Of Employment Law And Legalized Marijuana, Eva Lane

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

As states increasingly legalize forms of cannabis use, federal regulation remains stagnant. These outdated laws still hold power, undermining state-granted rights. This impact is especially felt in the employment sector. While states pass laws legalizing cannabis use, employers still have a right to a drug free workplace. Many employment agreements prohibit drug use, even if legal under state law. This Note examines recent caselaw to analyze how courts are handling the battle between state and federal government as it relates to cannabis legalization. Ultimately, the argument highlights the risk employees face – engaging in what they believe is legal behavior …

Labor And Environment Entwined: A Radical Green New Deal And Just Transition In Appalachia, Anne Marie Lofaso, Nicholas F. Stump

West Virginia Law Review

In this Article, Professor Lofaso and Professor Stump propose a genuinely transformative Green New Deal and Just Transition in Appalachia. The Article opens by tracing the long history of the Appalachian labor and environmental movements. Next, the Article interrogates the common contention that the Appalachian environmental and labor movements are opposed. While this contention has substantial truth, more complex forces have been at work in the region. Fossil fuel industry elites, for instance, have wielded exaggerated “jobs versus environment” rhetoric to maximize profits and quash emergent solidarities among local workers, residents, and activists. This Article contends that a key solution …

Unmasking The Algorithm: Addressing Bias And Accountability In Ai-Driven Employment Practices, Jasmine Wallace

University of the District of Columbia Law Review

This article argues that as AI systems continue and increasingly influence critical life outcomes, the courts must adapt existing legal frameworks to address disparate impact claims arising from AI-driven processes specifically in employment practices. Doing so will ensure redress for individuals who seek justice against AI-driven processes that cause unintended discrimination without explicit intent and hold organizations accountable to produce transparent and accurate AI-driven employment processes.

This article is divided into three distinct parts. Part I provides concise definitions of commonly used relevant AI terminology and provides an overview of the factual and legal history of disparate impact in employment …

Encouraging Expanded Producer Responsibility In Agricultural Labor Relations, Emma I. Scott

William & Mary Environmental Law and Policy Review

Over two million farmworkers provide essential support to the country’s food system. As detailed below, their current working conditions, living conditions, and legal protections do not reflect the importance of their contributions. As regulations and enforcement have fallen short in securing their rights and economic position, public incentive schemes can encourage improvements and equip grower-employers to reverse the race to the bottom and instead become leaders in providing dignified work opportunities. This Article looks at recent attempts and opportunities to leverage federal policies and programs to incentivize this type of leadership. It proposes that the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) …

Rethinking The Litigation Boom, Charlotte S. Alexander

Vanderbilt Law Review

This Article rethinks the functions and functioning of litigation booms. Using an original data set that tracks Fair Labor Standards Act cases during the 2000–2016 period, the Article shows that booms are not anomalies but are instead an expected behavior in our distributed system of civil law enforcement. Specifically, plaintiffs and their lawyers “herd” or converge on a particular type of case, fueled by information transmitted via networks, made available to the general public, or both. The data also reveal that booms can end on their own, reaching a natural tipping point without legislative or judicial retrenchment. This analysis has …

Valuing Worker Authenticity, Dallan F. Flake

William & Mary Law Review

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 protects workers from discrimination because of their race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. Controversially, courts do not typically extend this protection to individual expression tied to a protected trait, such as a Black employee who wears their hair in dreadlocks or a Latino employee who speaks Spanish on the job. Judicial unwillingness to protect employee self-expression tied to a protected trait causes employees who identify with marginalized groups to suppress their identities to conform with mainstream culture—often at tremendous costs to themselves and the organizations they work for.

This Article …

On The Meaning Of Discrimination: Anti-Racism Versus Color- Blind Policy, Keith N. Hylton

Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights & Social Justice

Chief Justice Roberts of the United States Supreme Court has said that "the way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race. "I In this Article, I examine what it means to discriminate on the basis of race-or what it means to stop discriminating on the basis of race. I consider interventions designed to enhance social welfare in an economy with racially discriminatory games operating at its base. One set of interventions is color-blind, in the sense that it treats all actors alike regardless of race. The other set of interventions …

Pay Transparency Laws Clear As Mud: A Discussion Of And Proposal For The Pay Transparency Legislation In Colorado And New York, Emily Hall

Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights & Social Justice

The note argues that while pay transparency laws in Colorado and New York represent progress, they fall short of achieving true pay equity because they do not require employers to disclose the factors influencing salary ranges. The author advocates for amendments to these laws, including mandatory annual pay audits and the disclosure of factors and their weights used in determining salary ranges, to enhance transparency and fairness in negotiations.

The Role Of Affordable Housing In Enhancing Tenants' Economic Stability In Connecticut: A Focus On Income, Employment, And Housing Stability, Osaid Zubi

Dissertations

This study examined the role of affordable housing in promoting economic stability among low- and moderate-income households in Connecticut. Focusing on income security, employment opportunities, and housing retention, this research highlighted the significance of affordable housing as a means to alleviate financial strain, support job retention, and foster community resilience. Utilizing a phenomenological approach, the study gathered insights from tenants, policymakers, and developers through conducting interviews and a focus group. Connecticut was chosen as the study site due to its high cost of living and affordable housing shortage, exacerbated by its proximity to New York City. Findings underscore the economic …

What Is Wrong With Maine's Occupational Disease Law?, Thomas R. Watson

Maine Law Review

By enacting occupational disease laws, state legislatures stepped ahead of limited medical knowledge concerning the etiology of disease. Responding to public and political pressures, legislatures placed the responsibility for adjudicating claims based on disease on administrators whose procedural and evidentiary systems were designed for claims due to injuries. But the causal connection of disease to employment is not so easily shown; until quite recently, diseases were not thought to support the common law causes of action that gave rise to the quid pro quo of workers' compensation systems. This Comment first sketches the development of Workers' Compensation law and its …

"No Pay, No Ras": Resident Assistant Unionization Amidst University Backlash, Justin Weller

Journal of Collective Bargaining in the Academy

While resident assistant (RA) unions have existed in the United States for over 20 years, RA unionization has accelerated on college campuses in recent years. This article explores the institutional responses to RA unionization through a distributive justice framework. I argue unionization aligns with the distributive justice framework and union-busting strategies do not align. I provide practical recommendations for institutions to align their practices with the National Labor Relations Act and relevant jurisprudence. Implications include a need to study RAs’ experiences in unionization and a continued focus on the ongoing legal challenges that may impact future unionization.

Every Grain Of Sand: 2024 Changes To The Scope Of Higher Education Unionization, William A. Herbert, Joseph Van Der Naald, Jacob Apkarian

Publications and Research

In this research note, we supplement the findings presented in the National Center’s 2024 Directory of Bargaining Agents and Contracts in Institutions of Higher Education. We aggregate and analyze data on changes in academic collective bargaining relationships for faculty, postdoctoral scholars, and graduate and undergraduate student employees in the year 2024. Our findings demonstrate that the growth in academic collective bargaining over the past decade that we documented in the 2024 Directory has continued. However, we find some significant contractions in faculty unionization through institutional closures and the revocation of bargaining units in the state of Florida. The research …

Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents

Re-Imagining Tomorrow: A Technology, Innovation Law, And Ethics Symposium On Addictive Technology And Children, Margaret Chon

Seattle University Law Review

In this Foreword, Professor Margaret Chon introduces Seattle University's Technology, Innovation Law, and Ethics (TILE) program, the 2024 TILE Symposium, and Dr. Gaia Bernstein’s Unwired: Gaining Control Over Addictive Technologies.

Keynote Address: The Movement To Protect Kids From Addictive Technologies, Gaia Bernstein

Seattle University Law Review

In this keynote address, I describe my personal journey starting with a school outreach program I created in 2017 to address technology overuse among kids. While I initially advocated for self-help methods, I grew to recognize that the tech industry bore responsibility. This realization led me to write Unwired: Gaining Control over Addictive Technologies, which focused on collective action to pressure the tech industry to redesign its addictive products.

I then describe the movement to control addictive technologies and protect kids, which has gained momentum since the end of the pandemic. This movement combines grassroots parent activism with legal-political action. …

Moral Panic Or Public Health Crisis? Lessons From Drugs And Gambling For “Addictive” Design, Matthew B. Lawrence, Haomin (Kevin) Yan

Seattle University Law Review

Alcohol, automobiles, guns, lottery, loot boxes, meat, music, opioid painkillers, processed foods, prop bets, slot machines, television, tobacco, violent video games. Over the last century each of these has been subject to concerns—some might even say “moral panics”—from parents and policymakers about avoidable harms to kids and adults. In some cases we look back with the benefit of hindsight and dismiss those concerns as naïve or moralistic. In others we look back at them as justified or as having come too late to check an expanding industry before it did unfathomable harm while growing so powerful that it became all …

Responding To Digital Addiction, Ned Snow

Seattle University Law Review

In Unwired: Gaining Control over Addictive Technologies, Professor Gaia Bernstein calls our attention to the growing problem of digital addiction. Digital addiction may sound like something out of a science-fiction novel or something that does not raise the same sort of real-life practical concerns as are present in a physical health crisis or an economic decline. But as Bernstein presents the evidence, we learn that the consequences of digital addiction can be just as harmful as a serious disease or a financial depression. Cognitive development disorders, anxiety, emotional depression, social isolation, and other mental health ills can be debilitating—as much …

The Ai Doppelgänger Dilemma: Cloned Voices In The Music Industry, Elizabeth Shields

Seattle University Law Review

With the rise of generative artificial intelligence (AI), there has been an influx of “voice clones”—deep-learning algorithms that create synthetic speech to realistically mimic human voices. Celebrities and, in particular, music artists, have been subjected to the proliferation of AI voice clones on social media platforms like TikTok and streaming platforms such as Spotify. Despite music utilizing AI voice clones having amassed much popularity, this technology can be harmful and highly invasive to musicians whose livelihoods often depend on their distinct voices. While legal scholars have attempted to articulate various rights that could protect a person’s voice, individuals are largely …

Let The Sunshine In: Crafting Constitutional Transparency Regulations For Content Moderation, Caitlin Ring Carlson

Seattle University Law Review

In response to public concern about the impact of social media, legislators in some U.S. states have developed laws to regulate the process of content moderation. Many include mandatory transparency and disclosure requirements, some of which courts have already deemed an unconstitutional infringement on social media platforms’ right to free expression. This article explores the parameters for crafting constitutional social media transparency regulations using existing U.S. media policy and insights from recent legal challenges. The resulting analysis identifies content neutral transparency requirements that mandate the disclosure of purely factual, non-controversial information as those most likely to withstand judicial scrutiny. Specifically, …